Mom's abdominal fat linked with birth defect risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who are obese before they become pregnant may be at increased risk of having a baby with defects of the brain and spinal cord, especially if they tend to put on weight around the waist, according to new research from the March of Dimes. But a woman's body mass index (BMI) before pregnancy had no relationship to her likelihood of having a child with certain types of heart malformation, Drs. Gary M. Shaw and Susan Carmichael of the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California found. Previous studies have linked maternal obesity to a number of birth defects, especially neural tube defects, which are malformations of the brain and spinal cord, Shaw and Carmichael note in the journal Epidemiology. The most common neural tube defects are spina bifida, in which the spinal cord fails... [read full story]